Sunday, January 04, 2009
Chess has always fascinated me, not enough to make me a very good player, mind you, but the elegance and sophistication of the game itself combined with the artistic rendering of the pieces I much admire. (For that matter, I hold a similar affection for a standard pack of 52 playing cards, but that's another blog entry.)
House of Staunton's web site shows some extraordinary pieces and boards, spanning a range from $13,000 down to under $50 and they all look lovely. They include some beautiful pre-Staunton designs (an example here) and as well as themed sets, and perhaps most interesting, they make the two additional Seirawan pieces, with when added to a regular set, form a Seirawan chess set.
Seirawan chess, much like Fischerandom chess, is an attempt to remove opening memorization as a major element of success and return the game to one of skill and reason. I'm not good enough to have actually experienced a need for that, but I know enough to understand how, at a high enough level, the need would arise. I like the idea of new twist on an old game that maintains—and maybe even restores—the spirit of the game.
Moving from a game of logic to the spiritual realm . . .
Fr. Anthony de Mello has some wonderful thoughts about awareness and love, blending Buddhist and Christian ideas and likely others I'm not aware of. My affection for Buddhist spirituality is quite connected to its empiricism, that is, they don't ask that you believe anything, only that you try their way and see for yourself. I did and I did. As well, I find that Buddhism enlightens my understanding of Christ's teaching wonderfully. For this reason alone, de Mello's work is well worth a look.
House of Staunton's web site shows some extraordinary pieces and boards, spanning a range from $13,000 down to under $50 and they all look lovely. They include some beautiful pre-Staunton designs (an example here) and as well as themed sets, and perhaps most interesting, they make the two additional Seirawan pieces, with when added to a regular set, form a Seirawan chess set.
Seirawan chess, much like Fischerandom chess, is an attempt to remove opening memorization as a major element of success and return the game to one of skill and reason. I'm not good enough to have actually experienced a need for that, but I know enough to understand how, at a high enough level, the need would arise. I like the idea of new twist on an old game that maintains—and maybe even restores—the spirit of the game.
Moving from a game of logic to the spiritual realm . . .
Fr. Anthony de Mello has some wonderful thoughts about awareness and love, blending Buddhist and Christian ideas and likely others I'm not aware of. My affection for Buddhist spirituality is quite connected to its empiricism, that is, they don't ask that you believe anything, only that you try their way and see for yourself. I did and I did. As well, I find that Buddhism enlightens my understanding of Christ's teaching wonderfully. For this reason alone, de Mello's work is well worth a look.
# posted by goldpython @ 10:40 AM 
